BAA, the owner of Heathrow and Britain’s biggest airport operator, said today that the number of passengers travelling fell by more than 4pc last year because of the recession.

The company, which also owns Stansted and recently sold Gatwick, saw passengers numbers travelling through its airports fall to 106.9 million in the year. However, the company said that the speed of decline eased in the final three months of the year to just 1.2pc compared with the same period in 2008.

Colin Matthews, BAA’s chief executive, said that although “towards the end of the year we saw signs of improvements, particularly at Heathrow, there are more challenging times ahead in 2010.”

Britain’s cold snap hit passenger traffic in December, with BAA estimating that 150,000 people couldn’t fly because of it. Overall, passenger numbers slipped 0.9pc in the month to 8 million.

Here’s a breakdown of the figures for 2009 compared with 2008 :

Heathrow down 1.5pc to 65.9 million
Stansted down 10.7pc, to 20.0 million
Southampton Airport down 8.2pc to 1.8 million
Edinburgh Airport’s traffic up 0.6pc to 9.0 million.
Glasgow down 11.3pc to 7.2 million.
Aberdeen down 9.4pc to 3.0 million.

Original Source – Telegraph